Lydiard Imitations

I answered him too but he came back and said no one had answered him. Maybe your answer will satisfy him.

In talking about drugs, I want to repeat that I'm skeptical about the possibility of running as fast as people are doing now "naturally." I'm even more skeptical that there as many people capable of doing it as are doing it now so maybe there are some "natural" sub 2:05s (and that's just a ballpark number.) I also know that I could well be wrong. But here's part of why I'm skeptical.

I agree with you that East Africans as a group seem more physically suited for distance running than anyone else does. I think it's more upbringing than genetics but that's another discussion. For now let's just agree that they're better suited and leave it at that.

Because Africans are faster to begin with, "aiding" them will yield better results, i.e, faster times and higher placings. Faster times and higher placings currently yield significant finacial rewards; not MLB level rewards, but a coach or agent with a half dozen athletes in his fold who are placing in the top three at Berlin, London, Chicago, etc. is getting a cut of some pretty decent money and if some of those athletes are setting course records or world records that cut gets even better.

In every other human activity I can think of the chance of turning a decent profit leads to cheating, not by everyone but certainly by a significant number of participants and nothing has come along and showed that our sport is any different.

If I'm a coach or agent who is going to build a framework to drug my athletes for profit I'm going to look for the highest payoff and the lowest possibility of detection and Africans are much better candidates than westerners.

For one thing, they seem naturally faster and "aiding" a 2:09 guy down to 2:04 is going to yield a much higher return than "aiding" a 2:14 guy down to 2:09.

For another, we have extensive coverage, as that goes in our sport, of westerners. Americans, Aussies, Canadians, Brits, etc. are always turning up on Flotrack or in Runner's World Daily or similar places. They live around other runners who know something of their comings and goings and associations.

On the other hand, Africans generally turn up at their races a few days beforehand and vanish a day or two later so they're much more anonymous and mysterious.

None of this is to say that I don't think western athletes have used PEDs. We know that they have and I doubt we've caught the majority of them. But sort of to underscore my point, in most cases I suspect the athletes I do because I know someone who knows those athletes and has told me about some of the people those athletes are associated with.

Richard,

While it would certainly be foolish to discount the POSSIBILITY that PEDs may be (partly) responsible for the recent spate of sub 2-05 Marathons, the LIKELIHOOD is that the answer lies elsewhere .....

I see no reason to dismiss the reasons that Renato has given ....

* Younger runners moving to marathon in their prime

* Relative riches to be had from Marathon (compared to track)

* Running being the sole focus for Kenyan runners

* More volume of specific race pace training over extended marathon like distance

* Better modulation .... i.e. periods of recovery between big workouts

* Genetic / Environmental benefits for East African runners

It's not all about training methodology ... BUT it is part of the answer.

Another factor that's often overlooked is the running culture within Kenya .... large training groups (30+) of world class athletes training together .... by comparison, the best athletes of the 70s / 80s / 90s were training relatively alone.

Jackanory wrote:

Richard,

While it would certainly be foolish to discount the POSSIBILITY that PEDs may be (partly) responsible for the recent spate of sub 2-05 Marathons, the LIKELIHOOD is that the answer lies elsewhere .....

I see no reason to dismiss the reasons that Renato has given ....

* Younger runners moving to marathon in their prime

* Relative riches to be had from Marathon (compared to track)

* Running being the sole focus for Kenyan runners

* More volume of specific race pace training over extended marathon like distance

* Better modulation .... i.e. periods of recovery between big workouts

* Genetic / Environmental benefits for East African runners

It's not all about training methodology ... BUT it is part of the answer.

Another factor that's often overlooked is the running culture within Kenya .... large training groups (30+) of world class athletes training together .... by comparison, the best athletes of the 70s / 80s / 90s were training

relatively alone.

That make sense. Derek Clayton was doing the long fast runs in the late sixties, but I do not think he ran easily between his extremely long sessions and at a bodyweight of 160 pounds, 77.5KG, he was probably way too heavy to have ever run 2:05.

HRE wrote:

On the other hand, Africans generally turn up at their races a few days beforehand and vanish a day or two later so they're much more anonymous and mysterious.

None of this is to say that I don't think western athletes have used PEDs. We know that they have and I doubt we've caught the majority of them. But sort of to underscore my point, in most cases I suspect the athletes I do because I know someone who knows those athletes and has told me about some of the people those athletes are associated with.

Nonsense. Your post smacks of prejudice, nothing else.

The Africans are around Africans, they don't see you around. If you show up there, you're there a short time and then leave, which is very strange huh.

Drugs are prevalent in western societies.

Innuendo... wrote:

Antonio Cabral wrote:

..he got many interest in the opposite sex always. He does twin daughters i guess.

Antonio, you have provided the perfect example and if it was deliberate, I salute your brilliance in English.

To "do" a female implies, er, exactly what Vaatainen liked to do to females. See many threads by teenagers on this forum.

"Doing twin daughters", well, a reasonable goal for an ambitious man, but hopefully not his own daughters ;-)

Sometimes i use some irony.

In Portugal everybody says that if you DON´T know what´s the english verb to use, DO the verb "TO DO" because "DO" DOES mean everything !

Sometimes it´s hard to raise one family without divorce. I DID reach 30 years with the same wife i´m married, the only one i did... sorry, the only one i got, sorry, the only one i married !

Wetcoast wrote:

http://athleticsillustrated.com/interviews/cabral-antonio/

Ok finally I have decided to point out where Antonio says things about training that is straight out of the book of Arthur Lydiard, despite his sarcastic posturing to indicate otherwise. If you want to read the full interview I have linked it above. I will add that when we did the interview, Cabral was almost a different person. Polite, thoughtful and considerate. In this thread, we have surly, sarcastic and either a lying or mistaken person...Jekyll & Hyde.

I will add "comment" within this post...

(...)

I willn´t comment on your comments to my own answers in the interview you did me. I just want to let you know that you forget that one interview it´s not to comment by the journalist that asks the questions, it to be read by the public. What you do is out of the ethics of journalism, and it´s more serious because you do it around the same issue you ask me to not talk about, your Lydiard obsession, of course, what else might be ?

I, as reader of your interviews, not placed in the context the interview that you ask me to do and that I did, but every othere that you did, i´m in the right position to comment all the other your interviews, and this is the reason I can comment that you are obsessed by Lydiard.

For example. I read your late interview with Keith twin about Seb Coe training. Intresting. But to interview Keith brother, and knowing who is Keith another Lydiard dependent it starts to be suspicious. Then in many parts, the focus of the it´s not Seb Coe factual training, it´s the attempt to prove that Coe does something similar than Lydiard.

Lydiard is a your obsession. It´s ok that you want to be a Lydiardist, but it´s not fair that on the undercover of independent serious journalism, interesting for the specifc public that are the runners, you don´t do nothing else than the Lydiard spell. Ge out of it, this is the role of the Lydiard Foundation and they do it well, thanks to mr. Nobby.

I read many of your interviews. I guess that the only absolute non-Lydiardist that you ever interview it´s me. There you might be proud of that my interview, because once on lifetime you did what you should do ever. Interview individuals from every training methodology. But you spoil everything with your obsessive Lydiardist comment.

There this is your main frustration, to had interview a non-Lydiardist. Then on the underlines of my answer you see some bit of Lydiardism, a few Lydiardism in other answers, high total committed and engaged Lydiardism in other my answers, and contradictions in some other answers.

Wetcoast. Keep on searching, read once and once again. In between my paragraphs, it´s Lydiardism without i knew, in between my sentences ther´s Lydiardism, in between my words ther´s Lydiardism, in between each letter of every word i said, search, it happens that you will discover some Lydiardism.

And I specifically said that I'm convinced western athletes use PEDs. But if I were going to invest in doping athletes for money, I'd do it where I can get the most bang for my buck and as it stands now, I don't think we could dope westerners to the sorts of performances and rewarsd as we can from doping Africans.

I don't want to insult Renato and don't mean this as an insult, but OF COURSE someone who's making decent money by coaching Africans is going to say the results aren't due to PEDs but rather to improved training. He may be right but his position means that you cannot think of him as unbiased.

Where there's big money to be made there is going to be cheating and when money and cheating is introduced to an activity it makes it impossible to evaluate the effectiveness of current methods of preparation for that activity in comparison to earlier methods.

I don't expect to convince anyone who thinks otherwise but I see nothing going on in any professional sport that makes me believe PEDs don't account for improved performances to some extent.

So Canova says:

1) He is an absolute expert on EPO and know one asks why he has researched it in such depth and felt the need to know so much about the drug. No one bats an eyelash.

2) Then he says my athletes have never taken EPO.

3) Then he says EPO doesn't work so don't worry about whether we are using it or not.

4) Then he admits 25 years after the fact that Italian athletes who scooped up all those medals he has previously claimed to be an ASSISTANT coach of, were cheating their asses off with illegal blood doping. No one bats an eyelash.

5) Then he says don't worry, that cheating "we" were doing didn't work either, they ran faster after they stopped that form of cheating.

6) 15 years from now if Canova lives long enough, he will say "oh by the way, those Kenyans I was coaching 15 years ago were taking EPO, but don't worry it didn't work and we found they actually ran faster when they went off the EPO".

7) Then he will say the the new super duper drug of the 2020s when he will search out the right ginea pigs who will run 1:57 in the marathon, "my runners are not using that drug, but don't worry, the new super duper drug doesn't work either".

8) He will say the reason is this new really modern training we are using that uses super duper precise race specific pace training down to the 1/100 of a second is why 25 guys are now running 1:57 in the marathon and is way better than the training he was using back in 2012. By then, all their training will be done at 1:57 marathon pace plus or minus 1% and hence the name super duper specific race pace training as opposed to the outdated 2012 regular specific race pace training plus or minus 5%

Antonio Cabral wrote:

Sometimes it´s hard to raise one family without divorce. I DID reach 30 years with the same wife i´m married, the only one i did... sorry, the only one i got, sorry, the only one i married !

Haha!

BTW I know a little old lady who lived in the UK for about 10 years and completely fooled people into thinking she spoke English by saying "lovely" every few sentences in conversation.

© Copyright – 2012- Athletics Illustrated

Arthur Lydiard of New Zealand was a pioneer in the sport of distance running. His coaching and his training principles were revolutionary during the 1950s and now are standard practice for most coaches today. For example, Greg McMillan of adidas McMillanElite - a post collegiate running program located in Flagstaff, Arizona – coaches almost exclusively by the Lydiard method.

Brett Gotcher, a McMillanElite marathon runner, ran the third fastest debut marathon by an American during the 2010 Houston Marathon with his 2:10:36 finishing time. More recently, Team McMillan won the USATF National Club Cross Country Championships December 11, 2011. They have won three of four years. The year they didn’t win, they did not enter a team.

When asked about the influence Lydiard has had on his coaching McMillan said, “Coaches today have it easy. Arthur provided the general principles that lead to success. All we have to do is apply those principles to the athletes we coach. The outstanding results of the adidas-McMillanElite team are because we apply Arthur’s principles. Period.”

James Li, track and field coach at the University of Arizona and coach of Bernard Lagat was recently speaking at the 2011 National Endurance Conference in Vancouver, BC, he said, “I coach exclusively by the Arthur Lydiard method.”

So how does the average person apply the Lydiard method? You may ask.

First things first: Building the Aerobic Foundation:

It may take twelve to 24 weeks or “as long as possible” to get the desired results. Think of this first phase as building the foundation of a training pyramid, the bigger the foundation, the higher the pyramid stands, the faster you can run. Keith Livingstone, author of Healthy Intelligent Training, the definitive Lydiard text said, “After a substantial block of consistent training at mainly aerobic levels, but with regular attention to the ’strong’ runs, the body will be substantially faster at all aerobic speeds”.

How to build a base? Run as much as you can fit into your lifestyle and ability to run daily. You may have time for 40, 80 or 160 kms/per week; work within your limits.

Vary your efforts so that you have a chance to recover from longer and faster runs. During this phase, you should not race or take on any hard speed training, doing so during this time will weaken the foundation of the training pyramid. “Racing or testing one’s speed during the aerobic building period, to see how your fitness is coming along, is like pulling a sapling from the ground to see if the roots have taken; setting the tree back by doing so,” says Nobuya “Nobby” Hashizume, co-founder of the Lydiard Foundation. So it is important to stay the course and keep your efforts aerobic throughout this phase.

Typically, Lydiard would have athletes run three steady longer runs per week, with one fartlek session and the remainder of the days are filled with mostly easier recovery running. You will also want to include strides on a grassy field during one of your easy runs.

If you run within your ability and vary your efforts, there is no need to take a day off completely, although some people will take a day off after their weekly long run.

Hills are Your Friends – 12 weeks to go:

Hills are hidden speed work. Running hills develop immense power in the lower leg and ankle, so that when you are ready to run fast, your leg muscles are prepared for that particular exercise. Running uphill improves leg lift, running form and strengthens the quadriceps muscles and ankle area. Running downhill opens up the stride and engages the fast twitch muscle fibers to improve turnover rate.

This is a four-to-six week period that fits in-between the aerobic phase and the faster, more strenuous anaerobic (speed) phase.

Run a set of hill repeats alternating with ample recovery, by running up a 400M hill fairly fast in an even effort, run back down gently. Start with four or five then add a repeat per week.

As you advance, try this circuit: Find a hill with a plateau at the top and bottom. Run up for 400m, recover for equal distance at the top before descending at a fast pace, lean forward a little, allowing your stride to open up. Once at the bottom of the hill and recovered, run a few strides, before ascending again. Start with three circuits in a controlled effort, add one per week.

If you are within your first year of running, skip the hill phase altogether and simply enjoy strong, aerobic runs over hilly terrain.

Tip: When running up the hill try not to walk to keep your heart rate in check. Unless you are a beginner, it is better to continue with running action throughout.

Anaerobic Training:

This phase also lasts four-to-six weeks. Now you are aiming to run fast, incurring oxygen debts and recovering. Everything you have done before now was in preparation for this phase.

The purpose is to create oxygen debt, by running fast, recover and repeat. When training anaerobically your blood ph drops and you will experience muscular fatigue, so it is important to space two to three days between each anaerobic workout, by running easy. This allows the blood to return to normal as well as to allow your muscles to recover. Your maximum anaerobic capacity (is genetically defined) tops out after four-to-six weeks. Once you begin to plateau in workouts, it is time to stop and move onto the coordination phase. You do not want to race your workouts. You want to be ready and sharp for the big day.

Coordination phase:

The coordination phase is the final phase before the taper and lasts four-to-six weeks. Here you are preparing for race pace work, so that you develop the feeling of race pace rhythm and the coordination to run well at your specific race pace. During this phase you work out weaknesses in your fitness. You may be able to run all day and run very fast, but that doesn’t mean you will race well on the day. Time trials at shorter and longer distances than your goal race are undertaken. If your goal event is a 10k, challenge 5k routes at 10k pace. Also consider 15k distances.

Now you are ready to taper for one to three weeks, depending on the length of your event.

—————————————————————————————————————————-

LSD: ‘Long Steady Distance’. Many people believe that “LSD” stands for Long Slow Distance. It does and it does not. Long steady running for an Olympic-level 1500m athlete is slow in comparison to how fast they can run when they race and train on the track, but it is by no means slow for the distance being undertaken. It is steady.

Lydiard’s long runs were often run on a hilly route as long as 35kms and included serious hills in the first half. All of his athletes ran this route, some every week throughout the year. Lydiard-coached runners who competed over distances as short as 800m and up to the marathon and all of them including the legendary 800m world record holder Peter Snell, ran together. The purpose of the long run is to build stamina. During your aerobic phase of training, you are developing your ability to take in, utilize and transport to the working muscles as much oxygen as possible. This is the foundation for the entire program and must be implemented first. Li said, “the long run is the most important part of the training week. It is run at a very strong pace”.

Speed work: Working the top of the training pyramid. It is common for runners to say that they are working on their speed when running longer repeats. This is not speed work in a true sense, this is anaerobic training. Speed work stresses the neuro-muscular system and is done year round by way of short sprints or strides on a soccer field. The strides are short enough that they are not anaerobic.

Racing while training – a no-no: According to Lydiard one could not build their aerobic stamina to its maximum and race or do anaerobic training at the same time. If you want to race your best on the day, do not race or go anaerobic in training at this time.

Tip: Running as fast as you can, at an even effort all the way for roughly 60 minutes is the upper limit of your aerobic capacity, it is called the Anaerobic Threshold (AT). To Li, the most important part of Lagat’s training was just below AT.

Time-based training:

Lydiard changed his distance-based training schedules to time-based. When speaking at a seminar an elderly lady stood up and mentioned that she was running 18-hours-per-week, to fit in the required miles. Run by time and you may be less prone to race your previous results on a training route that you commonly use. Also, some days you may feel better than others, to compare distant-based routes you may run the risk of feeling competitive within yourself, at a time when you need to build that foundation while running aerobically.

"James Li, track and field coach at the University of Arizona and coach of Bernard Lagat was recently speaking at the 2011 National Endurance Conference in Vancouver, BC, he said, “I coach exclusively by the Arthur Lydiard method.”"

I'll tell you, I did bat an eye. I was surprised that someone in his position would admit to being as knowledgeable about something like EPO as he did in that post. I certainly wouldn't have done so regardless of how muuch I knew because I'd expect it would raise the sorts of issues you did.

Lydiard Basics wrote:

"James Li, track and field coach at the University of Arizona and coach of Bernard Lagat was recently speaking at the 2011 National Endurance Conference in Vancouver, BC, he said, “I coach exclusively by the Arthur Lydiard method.”"

What many people say and do are two different things.

Hilversum wrote:

when I one day woke up and realized that I didn't have much time left if I wanted to run a "fast" marathon before turning fifty, I found that I faced a very similar dilemma. but I believe these three worked for me

How much improvement resulted?

HRE wrote:

I'll tell you, I did bat an eye. I was surprised that someone in his position would admit to being as knowledgeable about something like EPO as he did in that post. I certainly wouldn't have done so regardless of how muuch I knew because I'd expect it would raise the sorts of issues you did.

Careful, you are walking a tightrope here. You are liable to fall.

How so? I'm not accusing anyone of anything but if I were a prominent coach I would be very careful about how I addressed such a topic even if I was sure all my athletes were clean.

Anyway, where do you think I'll land if I do fall?

HRE wrote:

How so? I'm not accusing anyone of anything but if I were a prominent coach I would be very careful about how I addressed such a topic even if I was sure all my athletes were clean.

Anyway, where do you think I'll land if I do fall?

In very hot water. Canova has a job that he does very well, and part of that job is researching all things related to the sport in the modern era. You and your little friend want to draw dubious conclusions from that, because in your thinking, if Canova is not hiding his head in the sand, then he must be guilty.

In hot water with whom? And yes, that's a possible explanation. But given the questions about the sport these days if I were in his place I'd be cautious about making myself look like an expert.